RELATIVES OF the people killed and injured on Bloody Sunday have welcomed the announcement by the new Northern Secretary Owen Paterson that Lord Saville’s report into the 1972 British army shootings will be published on June 15th.
The report, some 5,500 pages long, will be published 12 years after former British prime minister Tony Blair set up the inquiry into the shootings that left 13 men dead on January 30th, 1972, with a 14th man dying six months later.
In a written ministerial statement yesterday, Mr Paterson said he was determined that arrangements for publication were fair for all those involved. “I will allow an opportunity for members of the families of those who died or were injured on the day, and for the soldiers most directly involved, to see the report privately and be briefed by their lawyers on it, some hours before the report is published,” he said.
Mr Paterson added that some MPs would have a similar opportunity to see the report in advance so that they could respond to its publication in the House of Commons.
Part of the Guildhall in Derry will be given over on the morning of publication to allow relatives and their legal teams to study the report before it is formally released in Westminster.
Up to the end of February the cost of the inquiry into how the 13 men were shot dead during a civil rights demonstration in Derry cost just over £190 million with the final cost expected to be higher.
Tony Doherty, whose father Paddy was shot dead on Bloody Sunday, said that he and the other families were confident that the report would vindicate those killed and wounded on the day.
“It will also vindicate the approach the families have taken since immediately after Bloody Sunday and since the Bloody Sunday Justice Campaign was set up in 1992. We believe that all of those killed and wounded will be formally declared innocent. We know that has already been done at a political level but it is important that it must also be done at a judicial level,” he said.
Mr Doherty added, “It is important that the original Widgery Report into the killings is repudiated. We have had to live with the wrongs of that report for almost 40 years and that has to be put right. Personally speaking I have been waiting for this moment since I was nine years of age and now I feel a degree of trepidation and nervousness but also a sense of relief”, he said.
The Minister for Foreign Affair Micheál Martin, welcoming the announcement, said he wanted to “reiterate the Government’s continuing solidarity with the families and pay tribute to them for their dedicated commitment to the memory of their loved ones killed and injured that day”.
Sinn Féin Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness said: “The lies of Widgery need to be exposed and buried and the truth of what happened when the British parachute regiment came to Derry and murdered 14 people on our street needs to be told.”
SDLP MP for Foyle Mark Durkan said: “As those most affected cope with the mixed emotions of the next few weeks, politicians should spare them partisan speculation about the report and insensitive denigration of the inquiry process.”
The DUP MP for East Derry Gregory Campbell said: “There will be many people who will be highly sceptical that the report is likely to ever satisfy some of those who have seen this entire process as simply a mechanism to rewrite the history of what happened on that day and punish the soldiers who were sent to respond to the violence and murders which had been happening in the area.”
The inquiry interviewed and received statements from about 2,500 people, with 922 of these called to give oral evidence.